The Telangana Chief Minister said that his decision was a mark of protest against the union government.
Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao announced that he would be boycotting the Niti Aayog meeting in New Delhi to be held on Sunday.
This is the 7th meeting of the Governing Council, and is the first in-person meeting since July 2019.
The Chief Minister said that his decision was a mark of protest against the union government.
Speaking at a press conference at Pragathi Bhavan, KCR said that he had written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and expressed his anguish against the Centre for not being given the flexibility to design and modify schemes based on the State's specific needs and conditions to ensure maximum benefits for the people.
The CM said that even though the Planning Commission system had brought fruitful results under successive governments since Independence, the BJP government led by Prime Minister Modi had abolished the Planning Commission in 2014 and constituted a NITI Aayog with the objective of cooperative federalism and the development of Team India.
"At the time of NITI Aayog's inception, I firmly believed the words of Prime Minister Modi who said that all States would witness equal development in the true spirit of cooperative federalism. But after seven years of its functioning, it is now clear that this explicit objective was observed more in breach. The Centre's actions show that the initiative has gone astray as States are not included as equal partners in the national development agenda. States have not been co-opted in the preparation of the agenda of NITI Aayog's meetings," KCR said.
Stating that when the Planning Commission was there, it used to have a detailed interactive discussion with the States on the Annual Plan, the CM said that now there was neither a plan nor the involvement of the States, and that NITI Aayog and its meetings clearly served no constructive purpose.
Claiming that the Modi government had been ignoring the recommendations of NITI Aayog, the CM said that way back in 2016 the NITI Aayog had recommended a grant of Rs. 5,000 crore for Mission Kakatiya to restore minor irrigation tanks in Telangana. Another recommendation was to provide a central assistance of Rs 19,205 crore (out of the total project cost of Rs 42,850 crore) for Mission Bhagiratha, a pioneering scheme in the country, to provide drinking water to every household in Telangana. However, the Centre had not only ignored these recommendations, but also did not release any money for the schemes.
"These examples are sufficient to say that the institution of NITI Aayog is useless," KCR said.
The Chief Minister said that because of no planning and no spirit of cooperative federalism, the country was passing through a difficult phase with unprecedented problems of a falling rupee, high inflation and increasing unemployment coupled with low economic growth.
"These issues impact the people's lives and are causing a lot of concern to the nation. But these are not discussed in the NITI Aayog meetings. I find the union government a silent spectator to this emerging serious scenario, often resorting to a jugglery of words to play on the people's emotions," he alleged.
"In view of these facts I do not find it useful to attend the 7th Governing Council meeting of Niti Aayog, and I am staying away from it as a mark of strong protest against the present trend of the union government discriminating against the states and not treating them as equal partners in our collective effort to make India a strong and developed country," KCR concluded.